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MILWAUKEE—Chuck Hayes isn’t particularly tall and John Salmons isn’t all that sculpted; Hayes doesn’t jump all that high and Salmons isn’t the quickest guy around.

Neither plays an awful lot on any given night and they are far from the first players fans talk about when the conversation gets around to the Toronto Raptors.

But they are smart and experience, and have this calming effect on the Raptors that makes them invaluable to a young team about to learn what NBA playoff basketball is all about.

“You look at those guys and they’ve seen everything,” coach Dwane Casey said of his two most veteran players. “They’ve played in big, big games and playoff games and they know how to play.

“That’s a good thing they bring to the team, their confidence, their calming effect and the other team knows that they know how to play.”

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Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri has said he wasn’t sure what he was getting when he obtained the 30-year-old Hayes and the 35-year-old Salmons in the Rudy Gay blockbuster trade in December; he felt Hayes could perhaps add some deep insurance as a fourth or fifth big man and the Salmons could provide some depth to a wing rotation that centred on DeMar DeRozan, Terrence Ross and, presumably, Landry Fields.

But Hayes’s “old-man strength” — as Casey calls it — has earned him regular duty as the savvy veteran big man who uses his smarts and rock-solid body, as much as his skills, to be able to defend any other big man one-on-one.

By being able to leave Hayes to his own devices defensively, it means the Raptors don’t have to double-team anyone when he’s on he court, leaving the others to defend their own checks in a simpler and more effective scheme.

Salmons, meanwhile, is the oldest Raptor and has shown he can be as sneaky good on defence as anyone. Watch him slyly grab an opponent’s uniform while he’s going around a screen, watch him grab a guy around the waist to disrupt something like a key inbounds play late in a close game — those are plays coaches love.

And they are plays that younger teammates like DeRozan or Ross might learn how to emulate as their careers unfold.

“He’s seen almost everything,” Casey said of Salmons. “He knows defensively how to play angles, he’s seen situations before, he’s not surprised by situations defensively. He’s just a veteran player.”

Coaches have a tendency, when the playoffs roll around, to tighten their rotations and ride their best players for longer in series that have no back-to-backs.

But Hayes is the most seasoned Raptor, with 26 playoff games to his credit with Houston, and he is sure to be a regular. Salmons has played in 22 post-season games with Philadelphia, Chicago and Milwaukee and is likely to be on the floor late in close games as he is now.

Casey values brains and experience and grit more that almost any other attributes in players, and that’s exactly what he gets from Hayes and Salmons most nights.

And seeing Salmons get into it a bit with Indiana’s Paul George on Friday night — with Hayes right behind him with a shove and some words — just cemented what the two veterans bring to the team.

“Chuck’s a vet, he knows how to play and John’s the same way,” said the coach. “You have to have guys like that.”

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